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This April 29, 2014, photo shows a visitor to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., using his cellphone to take a photo. A unanimous Supreme Court today said police may not generally search the cellphones of people they arrest without first getting search warrants. The justices say cellphones are powerful devices unlike anything else police may find on someone they arrest.
(AP File Photo)

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning ruled police cannot search the contents of a suspect's cellphone without a search warrant, but area prosecutors said the ruling already reflects the status quo in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

In a unanimous decision, the nation's high court ruled that even if police have legally obtained a person's phone, its contents remain off limits unless police have its owner's permission or a court order.

"Modern cellphones are not just another technological convenience. With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans 'the privacies of life,'" wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, quoting an 1886 ruling regarding a citizen's right to privacy.

The case before the Supreme Court, Riley v. California, involved police sorting through the cellphone of a man arrested on suspicion of illegally possessing two handguns. Police found evidence linking him to a shooting weeks earlier and charged him with attempted murder, according to court documents. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the rulings of lower appellate courts that upheld Riley's 15-year-to-life sentence.

The court's ruling is not expected to change the practices of local law enforcement agents. In Northampton County, police have obtained search warrants to check information on phones, even ones voluntarily handed over.

An example came Aug. 20 when Lower Saucon Township police brought Amanda Hein in for questioning about a newborn baby found dead in a Starters Pub toilet tank. Hein told investigators the baby was hers, was alive when she gave birth and that she had been having thoughts of suicide since then. Before an ambulance took her to St. Luke's University Hospital, police asked her to turn over her cellphone.

The phone remained in their custody for weeks until, as an afterthought, investigators received a search warrant to check its contents about her mental state and behavior the night she placed her son in a toilet tank. Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli used data from the phone to show she told no one about what happened and did not communicate any feelings of guilt or remorse for her actions.

Morganelli and Warren County Prosecutor Richard Burke both said the ruling should not affect local police. Search-and-seizure laws in New Jersey and Pennsylvania are generally more stringent than federal standards, they said.